QXO, the start-up building-products distribution company that’s quietly been constructing a C-suite over the last six months — while sitting on several billion dollars in cash — reportedly made Beacon Roofing Supply an acquisition offer on Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Beacon's market value is about $6.2 billion, and its share price has risen around 14% this year. At the end of October, the company reported third-quarter earnings that included record net sales of $2.77 billion, up 7.3% year over year. 

News of the offer sent Beacon stock on a tear, reaching a 52-week high of $116.30 before closing at $108.51, up 9.88% for the day. For perspective, the three-month average volume of Beacon stock trading sits around 702,000 shares; on Monday, volume was up more than 350% at 3,220,377. RC has reached out to Beacon for comment.

QXO was founded by entrepreneur Brad Jacobs, who made billions first in the waste management and equipment rental business before building transportation and logistics company XPO through a dozen deals before splitting it into three publicly traded companies: XPO, RXO and GXO. 

Jacobs entered the once-staid roofing and building products distribution market with a splash last June, saying QXO had raised $3.5 billion in an initial public placement; a second round of financing of around $620 million brought the company’s war chest to near $5 billion — debt-free.

QXO, which, like Beacon, is traded on the Nasdaq, has a market cap of $6.31 billion. Its stock, too, enjoyed a lift despite not owning anything but lots of liquidity. QXO closed up slightly at .65% at $15.50. After-hours trading was brisk, with the stock up another 3.10% at $15.98.

The Journal reported that its sources said a deal could be inked before the end of the year but also offered the hedge that talks could falter. The terms of the offer have been kept under wraps. 

According to Beacon’s website, the Herndon, Va.-based company is the largest publicly traded distributor of roofing materials and complementary building products in the U.S. and Canada. How that squares with SRS Distribution’s acquisition by The Home Depot, which now owns the distributor and has a market cap of $407.69 billion, is unclear.

QXO, based in Greenwich, Conn., was founded about a year ago when Jacobs and other investors invested about $1 billion in a small, publicly traded software company — SilverSun Technologies — and renamed it QXO. 

In an interview broadcast earlier this year, Jacobs said he was attracted to the building product distribution space by the potential to achieve growth through the application of technology and M&A.

“There [are] many other industries that are nice, but I'm not going to be able to get to $50 billion,” he said. "I want to get to $50 billion. So in this industry, there's a clear path of how I can do that.”

During his investing career, Jacobs has raised $30 billion of debt and equity capital. He’s also led some 500 merger and acquisition transactions in multiple industries,

Jacobs, whose reputation was put to print in a 2024 memoir, “How to Make a Few Billion Dollars,” offers investors a clue into his thinking by way of chapters titled “How to Do Lots of High-Quality M&A Without Imploding” and “How to Kill the Competition Instead of Killing Each Other.”

The few QXO board members whose names have been released include President-elect Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. A QXO spokesman said the company declined to comment on “Beacon rumors.” Beacon, for its part, has remained mum about the deal.

Jacobs’ QXO C-suite has lured some well-known business names, including Ihsan Essaid — former global head of mergers and acquisitions at Barclays — as its chief financial officer and, more recently, Ashwin Rao as Chief AI Officer. Rao built AI into Target’s core retail business, which has since reaped billions for the retailer. 

Jacobs told The Journal he anticipates QXO’s revenue growing to $50 billion over the next decade.